Jake1.1 wrote:
I watch continues to fail registering BPS during exercise.
Watch info: series 9(gps), ios 26.3, good battery level and smart battery saving disabled.
Tight on wrist, start exercise and heart icon keeps looking for bpm. Start after going directly on the heart app; while returned to exercise mode again, stopped and fail to register at whole routine.
Never dropped the watch, good wifi and phone link. Restarted the previous times to see if it gets correct, it works for few occasions to go back to deadbeat mode.
Apple, now what will be the solution?
There are scores of videos online about how to address this, both for the Apple watch as well as for other brands of exercise watches.
Most focus on tightening the watch band so it is very snug (it sounds like you may have already tried that) but also moving it on the arm AWAY from the hand, a bit closer to the elbow. To sense the heart rate during exercise it must shine a light through the skin and if it is too close to the hand/fingers, for some individuals the heart beat is not properly detected.
Also, some exercise (running, bicycling) may be "bumpy" and if the watch moves even a little, this can interfere with a good measurement. While being still may always provide a well detected heart beat as the watch doesn't move. For this, one may need to tighten the snugness of the fit even more.
I do bicycling for my workouts and it is a road bike in the street, often bumpy with watch being jostled, and found that just before the ride, if I slide the watch a bit away from the hand and tighten the band by one notch hole (I use the inexpensive Apple sports band), it reliably detects the heart rate. If I don't, once in a while it loses the heart beat and has to be re-adjusted in the middle of the workout, which is inconvenient and something to be avoided.
Another thing I noticed: once in a while the heart rate detection might go away (e.g. if I forgot to tighten the band before a workout starts) and then if the workout is paused for a few seconds and then restarted, it often locks up again to the heart beat. Don't know why, but I found this out accidentally when stopped at a traffic light and saw it "find" the heart rate again.
Others who have tattoos (I don't) have noticed they can affect the light sensor passing through the skin. And there is a very small number of individuals whose unique physiology might prevent the heart rate detection from working reliably on one or another brand of watch.
If you believe the watch sensor is faulty you should have that diagnosed by Apple for possible fix or replacement.
